


And Out in the Dark the World is Still Rolling

by jamestiqueeriuskirk



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Ableist Language, Alternate Universe - 1910s, Alternate Universe - 19th Century, Alternate Universe - Amusement Park, Alternate Universe - Freak Show, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2015-11-09
Packaged: 2018-04-30 19:01:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5176133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamestiqueeriuskirk/pseuds/jamestiqueeriuskirk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Since he didn’t walk with a limp, had no criminal history, and was a good Lutheran, at least on paper, it was, eventually, determined they would have to let him in.</p><p>“Coney’s always looking for new freaks anyway,” one of the uniformed men who’d been handling his bags muttered as he passed back the briefcase in which Loki had kept his books mostly dry for the trip.</p><p> </p><p>(DISCONTINUED, I lost the flash drive with the rest of this story on it)</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Out in the Dark the World is Still Rolling

Loki’s parents weren’t heartless- if they were, surely they would have found no place in their home for a deformed orphan- but when they sent his older brother off on his own to America it certainly felt that way to him.

His mother tried fruitlessly to console him. “You’re too young, baby, and we couldn’t bear to lose you. Besides, Thor won’t be gone long. He’s going to find steady work for a few years and then he’ll be back.”

After her failure, his father gave him a whole host of practical reasons, beyond only his age, one of which, at least, he was forced to concede rang true. “There’s no place for you in America, boy.” If he tries, he can still remember hearing those words, the morning after Thor’s departure, his father having grown tired of his sulking. “There’s hardly a place for you here.”

Cruel words to place upon the back of a boy of six, but Loki appreciated the truth, so long as it came alongside a dose of gruff affection, a spoonful of sugar to mask the bitterness that even still could not match some of the things he’d heard in his first few years wandering the streets.

The family’s only reminder of their son for the first few months of his trip was a single photograph, taken just before he set out. The picture betrayed none of Thor’s jovial nature, his mouth confined to a thin line for the photography process and ever-after in the result, though it made his powerful frame, already prodigious for a boy of fourteen, quite apparent. Soon, letters began arriving, letters stuffed into envelopes alongside American banknotes that they changed out for kroner at the very same trading post, and Loki doubled his efforts to teach himself to write, longing for the day that he might make his own additions to the post they sent back rather than dictating a few paragraphs to his mother.

He mastered his handwriting, and the skills that necessarily complimented such as prose and diction, quite remarkably, but he never had any chance to impress Thor with what he’d learned for, at the close of his first year abroad, the letters stopped arriving. They spent more than they could afford writing to every American acquaintance they had, and, every time a new boat went out, a fair few of the emigrants promised to enquire after Thor’s whereabouts once they reached New York, but they never received so much as one promising lead.

“We may as well give up,” Loki heard his father say to his mother one night, late, nearly dawn, when they thought he was in bed. “He probably found success and a woman in America and has forgotten his family obligations.” 

At that Frigga sobbed, and Odin himself looked heartbroken, but he kept up, as was his way, a stern facade in the hopes it might make their loss sting less. “If he wants to turn his back on his home, so be it. We still have each other. We still have another son.”

After that, they poured their efforts into Loki. He grew to appreciate their attentions, and, after a time, could not say which he resented more: that it took Thor’s disappearance for them to show him such care, or that it had taken Thor so long to abandon them.

 

They couldn’t, of course, expect him to inherit the farm; with his weak frame, it hardly mattered how tall he came to tower over his father by his early teen years, he could simply not handle a farmer’s life, and even if he married the sturdiest of women- not that any would have him- she and their children still would be unable to carry out the duties he’d be unable to fulfill. Nor could they afford the tutor his mind deserved. He spent only a week at the nearby village’s school before deciding not even the lovely shelf of books the teacher kept behind his desk was worth enduring the cruel mockery of his peers.

He’d been a problem child, a hellion, and now he was approaching manhood a problem adult, though for reasons much different. His fantasies varied: some days he wished to be a writer, spinning tales to enthrall a readership who would never lay eye on any part of his face and could judge him by his mind alone, and some days he dreamed of taking up the white coat and finding a cure for his affliction- whatever it may be, the cursed pallor that had stumped the best of the country doctors they brought for him and, once, even a researcher from the Royal Frederick University- in test tubes and beakers.

Neither ever came to pass, but, as he neared his seventeenth summer, his father presented him with a third choice, the most viable solution he’d heard yet.

“Do you remember your second cousin, Forseti?” Loki had not been aware he had any such relations, but he nodded nonetheless. “He’s made a name for himself as the junior partner of a law firm in Chicago. They have need of a clerk, and his seniors have given him free reign over the hiring process, so long as they have his guarantee the young man he finds will be reliable, and a hard worker.”

“What are you saying, father?” Though it had already dawned on him, he found it was nearly always preferable to let others explain themselves fully, lest they think you guilty of some desire to manipulate them with the very words they planned.

“If you can be packed quickly, there is a boat leaving on Friday.”

Of course he could be packed quickly. Who couldn’t be, faced with a choice between a behind-the-scenes career and upward mobility in America and wasting his future stuck on a farmland, cloistered away from the gawking townspeople?

 

His father’s goodbye was little more than a handshake, and it make Loki’s chest tighten to remember that he’d gone through much the same ritual more than ten years ago, when he’d sent Thor off. 

His mother had words for her youngest, the child she’d loved as if she’d nursed him at her breast, seen to more tenderly perhaps than she had to Thor, and he didn’t even attempt to stem the flow of his tears.

To his surprise, it was his father, not his mother, who, in his last parting words (and how bitterly Loki would remember that, he was sure- Odin taking their last few moments together to remind him that, even out of the picture as he was, his elder brother remained the one of true import) pleaded that Loki keep on his guard for any news of Thor, even the slightest whisper.

It was only natural he agreed, though, at that point, nothing he could have said, hurtful or otherwise, would have stayed his course to America. And so he left, in a standing closer to his parents’ good graces than he’d ever been before or ever would be again, oblivious as they were to the small spark of spite he’d carried so long being fanned into flames now that he was free from their governance. 

If Thor made it his business to abandon him, he hardly felt it proper to make it his to seek out Thor, promises he made to his father notwithstanding. He simply wouldn’t look- there was little chance he’d find Thor in such a densely-populated country even if he really threw his back into the search, and little he’d recognize a grown man just from his memory of a badly faded picture of an adolescent boy- Thor could go about whatever it was he’d judged so important it merited severing all ties with his own family and Loki could study law in peace, occasionally sending regrets to his parents, who would never be any the wiser.

Yes, that suited him just fine.


End file.
